Interview - Why Congress Is So Divided—And One Idea to Fix It

**Mosheh Oinounou** (0:00)
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**SPEAKER_2** (0:53)
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**Mosheh Oinounou** (2:01)
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the MoNews podcast. It's Moshe Oinounou here with a special interview edition. We cover politics nearly daily here on the podcast. It's something many of you have questions about. And one of the biggest frustrations we hear from all of you is that Washington feels more divided than ever. So today we're looking at a potential solution. It's a novel attempt to answer a simple question. Can you actually measure whether your member of Congress is trying to bridge the divide in a semi-scientific way? And which members of Congress are actually making the situation worse? Today's conversation is with Brad Porteus. He's the founder of Bridge Grades, which is a new non-partisan scorecard that doesn't just rate politicians based on whether they're liberal or conservative. Instead, it grades every member of Congress from A to F, a scale many of us are familiar from school, based on how often they work across the aisle, build bipartisan coalitions, and avoid the kind of personal attacks that have become so common in politics. So you may have heard of scorecards in the past from the NRA or the ACLU, that rate politicians based on their views. Ultimately, what Bridge Grades is trying to do here is offer a new non-partisan scorecard that is focused on solutions. So in this podcast, we speak with Brad about who earn the highest grades, why many of the biggest political stars and leaders earn Fs, and whether you can be deeply conservative or deeply progressive and still get an A. We'll also dive into the difference between collaboration and compromise. Many people don't want their side to compromise, but collaboration these days is still possible even if you have very different politics. It's something Brad and I discuss at length here in this podcast. This all comes at a time when outrage often gets rewarded more than governing on social media as well as on Capitol Hill.
So I think this is a really fascinating look at whether we should start judging our elected officials by something different. Not just what they believe, but how they lead and whether they're actually getting things done, working with the other party. Here's my conversation with Brad Porteus.
All right, Brad, it is great to be chatting with you today.

**Brad Porteus** (4:00)
Thanks a lot for having me. I'm excited to tell you more about Bridge Grades.

**Mosheh Oinounou** (4:03)
Yeah, so I loved hearing about this and I think our audience will very much appreciate this because we have an audience here at Mo News that is interested in a time where things are so partisan in people who compromise and collaborate. And we'll get to the distinction there, you know, compromise versus collaborate, which I know you've been drawing here. But you know, we have heard for years about like someone's NRA rating or various other ratings that they have. And you created Bridge Grades as a way to take a look at members of the House and Senate and their bipartisan legislation, cross-party relationships, public rhetoric, and you're giving them grades A to F.